Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Woe is me… my 10 days being counselled by a chatbot (woebot)…

Woebot is a counselling chatbot – I’m not big on mentors and
counsellors preferring the “get a life not a coach” approach, but what the
hell, we all need help sometimes. So I gave it a go, for research purposes only
you understand…

Day 1

Started with a series of friendly exchanges, where you have
little choice in options but that’s fine – it sets the tone. Couple of things I
liked abut the first exchanges.

Sorted out a technical issue seamlessly – rerouting me to
messenger.com - that was nice. It also linked to the Stanford clinical trial on
the bot. comparing it with a non-bot intervention – although sample size is
small, impressive. Also honest about the limitations of a bot – doesn’t
overpromise.

You do get sucked into thinking it has human agency, even
though it’s just coding, pre-scripting and maths. What’s strange is that most
of the exchanges are single button presses – not dialogue at all but quite
interesting, as they flip the counsellor, counselled role around. You are
asking open questions, such as ‘How’, ‘Tell me more…’ ‘Oh’ ‘Sure’ ‘No doubt’ ‘Absolutely’.

Emojis are dropped in for variety and useful (at last), as
they’re really are asking for an emotional response – that’s interesting and not
easy to do F2F. The unlocked padlock emoji is nice as is the little sapling for
hope and progress – sounds hokey, but it’s not.

What’s nice is that the interface is so simple and natural.
You focus on what’s being said and asked and in this context, as you’re asked
to think and reflect on your own feelings and behaviour - that’s useful.
Dialogue is natural, easy and seems so very human.

The up-front promise of absolute anonymity is also good and
I can see why this would appeal to people (I’d imagine the majority) who want
help but are too shy or embarrassed to come forward. To be honest, I don’t want
some random person counselling me… I want the distance.

The first lesson from woebot was to avoid the language of
extremes – “all good”, “all bad”, “always” and to adopt a more measured
language. All good… ooops!

One small thought here, I’d have liked this as audio. I’m
working with a tool that allows learners to input answers by voice – it’s neat.

First session was 74 small exchanges and she said Bye. Speak
again to tomorrow.

Day 2

Prompted me at 10.53, when I was active on Facebook. Asked
politely if I wanted to continue. This time we’re onto multiple-choice questions
about ‘all or nothing thinking’ and ‘should’ statements. Quite like the upbeat
tone and lively feedback – seems appropriate in a session like this. I’m typing
in more, rather than accepting responses – feels more like dialogue. Just 5
mins – small but sweet. I could get used to this.

Day 3

Had two days in London, so no time to do anything but woebot
was patient.

“No worries, talk soon”. You have the option of continuing,
rescheduling or waiting on the daily prompt. This, of course, is one of the
great advantages of online counselling, indeed online anything, it’s 365/24/7.
You do it when you feel like doing it, not when an expensive counsellor
timetables you into their practice.

The whole thing is very upbeat, chatty…. Then it came up
with SMART objectives – getting a bit of jargonish – not sure about this. Actually
popped in a joke today – quite funny actually. SMART objectives – really?
Getting a sense of CBT being a bit flakey – a bag of bad management technique
marbles.

Day 6

That was good - tracking my mood…

Oh no it’s on to ‘mindfulness’ – but in for a penny, in for
a pound of bullshit…

“Mindfulness is the opposite of mindfulness” it says, breaking
its previous advice not to fall for the language of extremes…Tried disagreeing with woebot here but it was
having none of it – clearly not listening, in short, not mindful

Now a breathing exercise – 10 mindful breaths.

Day 7

Long quiz – not sure about this – far too long

Feedback –
“Your greatest strength is your love of learning! You are just like Hermione
Granger from ‘Harry Potter’”

That was
hopeless – trite and I hate Harry Potter….

Day 8

Got a bit
technical with ‘should statements’ – not so sure that this area of CBT is
entirely clear – seems a bit simplistically linguistic.

Day 9

Asked me to
talk about labels I use about myself – reasonable question – promises research
tomorrow – didn’t like the way it cut this short – should allow me to go on if
I want.

I think I
prefer chatbots on-demand, like Replika, which you just tap on your phone to
speak to. Replika is famous for teasing out the most intimate of thoughts from
its 1.5 million users. It uses ‘cold-reading’ techniques from magicians, who
claim to read minds.

Ellie’s another, created for DARPA. Designed to help doctors at military hospitals
detect post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other mental illnesses
in veterans returning from war, but is not meant to provide actual therapy, or
replace a therapist. There is good evidence that people are more likely to open up to a bot than a person.

Day 10

Today is
adopting a Growth Mindset. Good to see something a little bit more solid, as it
reduces my general skepticism about therapeutic techniques, which seem to be a
mixed bag of populist techniques almost thrown together…

Woebot
wants to tell me a story to explain, I say yes… Story about woebot being told
it was smart, believed it was smart but wasn’t really. This led to the wrong
mindset – unable to cope with setbacks and failure. Fixed mindsets are bad so
open yourself up to always learning and developing – be more open and fluid in
your thinking. Be more accepting of setbacks and mistakes. Get out of polarized
‘smart v stupid labels. Then gave a link to a Carol Dweck video – good these
video links. Good session.

Conclusion

It has its
limitations and oddities but it’s good to chat to something that doesn’t judge
you and has a few surprises up its sleeve. Woebot is a bit of fun, then again,
I don’t feel I’m in need of help, many do. If I found it interesting, they are
far more likely to get more out of the experience. You always have the
chance of accepting, rescheduling or saying no to Woebot – which is useful. I’m
often too busy or not in the mood for therapy but the fact that it is ‘pushed’
out to you is a real plus. I rather like its daily prompts – a bit reassuring
and a bit of fun. Try it – you just might learn something – even about
yourself.

1 Comments:

I thought this was a joke until I started to play around with Woebot. It's a bit of a blunt tool, but it is helping me grapple with some issues I have currently have. It's friendly, encouraging and succinct. I've just got to the videos.